1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus including a plurality of paper output trays and an image printing unit and to a printed-material processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, printing apparatuses including a plurality of paper output trays detect a stack limit of each tray based on a stack state of the tray determined using a paper detecting sensor on the paper output tray or by counting the number of output papers after detection of a plurality of number of output papers. Upon detecting that the tray is full, the printing apparatuses notify users of occurrence of a full state through a display panel to allow the users to recognize the state.
In Japanese Patent Registration No. 03617752, a control operation is executed in a following manner. A stack state is detected for each tray. If a tray currently receiving output papers becomes full, the paper output destination is sequentially switched to an available tray, so that termination of printing is avoided as much as possible.
However, when the full state is detected for each tray and the message for notifying the users of the full state is displayed on the display panel for each tray, the number of displayed messages increases as the number of paper output trays increases. In particular, when a plurality of full trays exist, as many messages as the full trays are displayed. In such a state, the users have difficulty in recognizing the full trays.
When an emphasized error notification is issued to users after all of the trays become full, printing processing unfortunately stops because no paper output destination is found. In particular, the emphasized error notification issued after all of the trays become full prevents users working apart from the printing apparatuses from knowing beforehand that the printing processing is about to stop.